


Chocolate Hearts and Cupid's Darts

by azurish



Category: Bend It Like Beckham (2002)
Genre: Bad Poetry, F/F, Fluff, Getting Together, Misses Clause Challenge, Post-Canon, Secret Admirer, Valentine's Day, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 05:17:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13139850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azurish/pseuds/azurish
Summary: The thing about being your best mate’s secret admirer is that it's probably aterribleidea to try to conceal all your Valentine's Day scheming when you also share a room.  But the thing about Jules Paxton is that she couldn't care less, because Jess Bhamra is absolutely worth it.





	Chocolate Hearts and Cupid's Darts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sophie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sophie/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! =) I completely agree that Jules and Jess are utterly adorable and the original movie should 100% have been a cute queer love story, so when I saw your Yuletide letter, I just couldn't help myself. :D Hope you enjoy!

The thing about being your best mate’s secret Valentine was that it was awfully hard to do so surreptitiously when said best mate was also your roommate, Jules reflected, as she furtively adjusted the sweatshirt she’d thrown over her box of chocolates when Jess had unexpectedly entered the room.  This might not have been the most brilliant plan Jules had ever dreamed up.  Then again, Jess – who was currently puttering around their dorm room, looking for a missing textbook – was certainly worth it.   So Jules was sprawling awkwardly across their futon, a notebook open to a random page in her lap, and trying to look innocent.  She’d been copying out the poem she intended to affix to the chocolates in unrecognizable handwriting when Jess had unexpectedly returned to their dorm room, and in her desperation to act natural, she had accidentally grabbed last semester’s economics notes when Jess had entered.  She pretended to write out an equation as she watched Jess dig through her desk drawers.

“Do you think it might be over near you?” Jess asked, not turning around.  “I know I was studying on the futon yesterday – mind taking a look underneath?”

Jules peered under the couch and saw nothing except dust and hair elastics.  “It’s not here.  Maybe you left it in the library?”

“No, I could’ve sworn I had it in the room just last night.”

“What about the cafeteria?”

“I’m sure it’s here …”

Jules ran through a list of places that were _anywhere but their dorm room_ quickly.  “Uh, maybe it’s in the locker room?”

“As if _anyone_ would try to study there,” Jess said, with a snort.

Only by reminding herself that truly desperate suggestions might raise Jess’s suspicions did Jules manage to refrain from suggesting Jess check the international student storage room or the communal showers.  “Any chance you were studying while you waited for that load of laundry to finish last night and left it down by the machines?” she tried instead.

Jess shook her head, then looked up from the drawer and scanned the room.  Jules’s stomach lurched as she saw the other girl focus on her.  “Hey, there’s something sort of rectangular under your sweatshirt – could you take a look?”

“Oh, no, that’s just my calculator,” Jules said quickly.  “I’m working on a problem set right now …”

“Looks a bit large to be a calculator,” Jess said, with a frown.  The bulge under Jules’s sweatshirt was blatantly at least five times larger than any regular calculator, and Jules cursed internally as Jess crossed the room.  “Here, what’s this?”

She reached for the Santa Clara sweatshirt and Jules, unable to sit still as all her Valentine’s Day schemes were upended, dove forward to prevent her from lifting the garment.  She felt cardboard crunch under her hand and gritted her teeth.

“What the hell, Jules?” Jess asked, rearing back.

“It’s nothing – I just – ”

“What are you hiding?” Jess demanded, and then she tugged the sweatshirt forward by one gray sleeve.  Jules was forced to give up to avoid thoroughly crushing the heart-shaped cardboard box.  She settled back on her heels and watched as Jess lifted up the sweatshirt.

The bright red box of chocolates, its top slightly squashed from Jules’s impromptu tackle, was immediately visible.  Its glossy finish gleamed innocently in the light from their oversized dorm room lamp.

“Oh!” Jess said, edging backwards.  Something flickered across her face too quickly for Jules to read her expression, and then she settled on a tight smile.  “Ah.  Sorry about that?  I thought – never mind.  I shouldn’t have been so nosy – and don’t worry, I won’t tease you.”

“Tease me?” Jules echoed, at a loss, as she got back to her feet.  Of all Jess’s possible reactions at discovering that Jules was the secret admirer who had been leaving early Valentine’s Day notes for her all week, this had not been what she had expected.

“I won’t tease you about getting chocolates for Aaron,” Jess said.  “You know – after how much you complained about him being an arse the last few times the men’s football team hosted parties.”

Jules blinked.  “Why would I buy chocolates for Aaron?  He’s _absolutely_ an arse.”  Aaron Wright was a forward on Santa Clara’s men’s team who considered himself God’s gift to the female gender.  He had a bad habit of getting trashed at every co-ed varsity soccer party and then challenging all his teammates to soccer ball juggling contests in order to impress the women present.  The last time he had tried it, Jess had gotten so fed up that she had stepped in to accept his challenge and roundly trounced him, to Jules’s not-so-quiet delight.

“Oh, good,” Jess said, with some relief.  “I thought maybe you were, I dunno, secretly pining for him or something.”

Jules wrinkled her nose.  “Who would ever secretly pine for Aaron?”  More to the point, who would secretly pine for Aaron when Jess was _right there_ to be secretly pined over?

“But why were you hiding them, then?” Jess said.  “If they’re not for someone embarrassing, like Aaron – well, who are these for?”

Jules paused, caught out.  Jess had already seen the chocolates.  There was no chance of giving them to her incognito now.  True, she could easily name someone else; but she had paid good money for the chocolate arrangement, and she didn’t want to eat it all by herself or something equally sad.  Plus Jess had seemed honestly _distressed_ at the thought of Jules carrying a secret torch for Aaron.  There was no other word for it.  It might just have been because Aaron Wright was so very reprehensible and Jess had been imagining having to pretend not to consider him a prick for Jules’s benefit if her best mate began dating the guy, but it might also have been something _else_.

And if she was being honest with herself, the whole reason she had started this ridiculous secret-admirer-roommate charade in the first place was because she thought there was a chance that Jess might be all right with having her as her not-so-secret admirer someday.  There had always been something between them that felt more _real_ and more _electric_ than anything Jules had ever felt with a normal friend before.  From the very first moment she’d seen Jess, beautiful and laughing, with her thick braid of dark hair streaming behind her, as she juked her way around shirtless men who couldn’t put a foot on the ball when Jess was on the field, she’d been entranced, and Jess – well.  Jess had gone to Germany for her, and then gone to America with her, and neither of them had ever even thought to question it.  At the time, Jess had frowned over the thought of breaking up with Joe – but neither of them had even considered the possibility of not going to Santa Clara together.  That had to mean _something_.

So, in for a penny …

“They’re for you,” Jules said.

“I’m sorry?” Jess said, with a look of adorable confusion that Jules would have spent a moment appreciating under other circumstances.

Right then, her heart was beating much too quickly for her to pause to take in the sight.  For a moment, Jules felt like she was out on the field, taking a chance on driving towards the goal, all her team’s hopes riding on her as she dribbled down the pitch.  But she was always in control with the ball at her feet, whereas now she felt like she had been caught off her feet, waiting on tenterhooks for Jess’s response.  “Here,” she said, thrusting the chocolates at her best friend.  “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

“It’s not Valentine’s yet,” was Jess’s kneejerk response to that declaration, and then, “Wait, these are a _Valentine’s Day gift_ for me?”

Jules thrust her hands in the pockets of her jeans, the movement carefully casual.  If she’d been reading the signs wrong – if Jess didn’t like the idea – she could always pretend it had been a joke.  Or a friendly gesture.  People definitely got platonic Valentine’s gifts for their best friends, right?  “It’s not a big deal,” she said.

“You wrote a _note_?” Jess said, completely ignoring her, and right, there went the “pretend it’s a platonic gesture” plan.

“Don’t look –” Jules began, but Jess had already unfolded the romantic poem that Jules had been in the process of copying over and was reading it.  She’d only managed to get down the first two lines before Jess had entered the room, but “To a very special striker/Who has struck feelings in my heart” didn’t sound very platonic.

“How does it end?” Jess demanded, looking up and meeting her gaze squarely.

“I’m not actually that good at poetry –” Jules tried, which was true, but Jess shook her head.

“Jules, _how does it end_?”

Jules glanced down at the draft she had in her notebook.  “To a very special striker/Who has struck feelings in my heart/Happy Valentine’s from an admirer/Who’s been struck by Cupid’s darts.”  She paused.  “I thought dart should probably be singular, to make the rhyme work.  But just one dart sounds stupid.  And I know Cupid uses arrows, anyways, so I’m not sure –”

“It’s perfect,” Jess said, her voice breathless in way Jules was sure she had never heard before.  “That’s just – perfect.”  And then she leaned forward and kissed Jules.

“Happy Valentine’s,” Jess said, several minutes of enthusiastic making out later, when they had finally broken apart and were sitting on the couch, catching their breath.

“It’s not Valentine’s Day yet,” Jules said, and Jess reached over lazily to thump her shoulder.

“So you’ve were the one leaving all those little Valentine’s notes, then?” Jess asked.

Jules nodded.  “I thought it would be fun.  And I thought – I dunno, I thought you might be all right with it.  I didn’t think I was just imagining the way things are between us.”  She paused.  “Whereas _you_ seem to have been busy worrying about the way things were between me and Aaron Wright …”

“Shut up,” Jess said, pushing against her shoulder again.  And then, “I mean, I hadn’t even thought about it before.  But with how cagey you were being, when I saw these chocolates, I jumped to a couple conclusions.  And all right, I _might_ have been a bit jealous.”

“I can’t believe you thought my standards were that low,” Jules said.  “My standards are _high_.”

“And yet I clear them,” Jess said, with a giggle, and it was Jules’s term to shove her shoulder.

“You clear my standards so easily that I bought you twenty-five pounds’ worth of chocolate,” Jules said.  “Which I would never do for Aaron, just so we’re absolutely on the same page about that one.”

Jess giggled again.

“I had a whole plan for giving these to you, by the way,” Jules said.  “I was going to sneak the heart into your locker after practice with a note, and maybe some flowers …”

“You can still do the flowers,” Jess offered, flashing her a quick, bright grin.

“Somehow I feel like it’s going to be hard to be your secret admirer anymore.”

“I’m pretty all right about you being my _not_ -secret admirer,” Jess said.

It was probably worth having a serious conversation about what sort of not-secret relationship Jess envisioned them settling into.  It was probably worth having several serious conversations about what it would mean for them to be open about their affections – not to mention defining what _exactly_ those affections were.  But for now they were curled up together on the couch, so close that cuddling seemed to be a definite possibility in Jules’s future, and they had twenty five pounds’ worth of chocolate in front of them and all the time in the world.

“Well, that’s not too bad, then,” decided Jules.  “Plus we get to open the chocolates now,” she observed philosophically.  “And eat them tonight and possibly have a romantic evening in …”

Jess frowned and suddenly drew back.

“What’s wrong?” Jules asked, alarmed.

“I mean, I’d love to eat the chocolates and have a lovely night in tonight,” Jess said, “but I’ve just realized – I still haven’t found that stupid textbook!”


End file.
